West Country special: Homes for celebrities

Drawn by its remote charms, actors and musicians are flocking to the West
Country. Graham Norwood learns how buying agents help the stars to
stay incognito while finding their dream homes

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Among the glamorous Devon properties currently for sale are this 16-bedroom house in Mamhead for £8m

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West Country regulars include Martin ClunesPhoto: Rex Features

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£4m Georgian mansion in Uffculme (Strutt & Parker, 01392 215631)

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Crediton, Devon: For the celebrity wanting period style, this five-bedroom recently renovated Grade II* listed farmhouse ticks all the boxes. It is down a long drive with more than 100 acres of land to give security and privacy. If the television work dries up, the lake is stocked with carp. £2.5m from Jackson-Stops & Staff (01392 214222; www.jackson-stops.co.uk)

Port Isaac, Cornwall: Not much land but plenty of accommodation here, with a four-bedroom farmhouse, another four-bedroom property and a stone barn ripe for conversion. £2.85m from Savills (01872 243200; www.savills.com)

Bye bye Beverly Hills, move over Mayfair. If you want to see the world’s celebrities, head to Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset.

A long list of the great and the good have crowded to this picturesque part of the world. Goldie Hawn and daughter Kate Hudson have livened up the quiet Devon town of Topsham. Kate is engaged to Matt Bellamy, a local farm owner who happens to be frontman of rock superstars Muse.

Julian Fellowes, Oscar-winning creator of Downton Abbey, lives in Dorset. Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts is regularly seen driving in the lanes near his home at Dolton in north Devon.

Not enough? Soon you can spot Bafta-winning actress Carey Mulligan – the star of An Education and Drive – who is this month rushing back from filming The Great Gatsby in Australia to look for a farmhouse in Devon. She plans to live there with new fiancé Marcus Mumford, singer of folk-rock band Mumford and Sons.

Few people have a better insight than local buying agents. If you are a celebrity looking for a home, agents such as George Wade of Property Vision are your best friends. They have the inside story on how the rich and famous go about securing their West Country crash pads.

“As other destinations have become high profile and glitzy, such as parts of the Cotswolds, well-known people have been forced to look further afield to find a private retreat,” explains Wade.

“The West Country is very large, and so there is a greater chance of finding a property with a degree of privacy.”

Buying agents are useful because they act as a screen between a celebrity buyer and an unsuspecting vendor. They use their contacts to find and inspect the best houses on sale and then shortlist them, without ever revealing that the prospective purchaser is a big name with a budget to match.

Eventually, the celebrity will visit the shortlisted homes – sometimes in disguise to avoid attention. Then the buying agent will enter into negotiations on the chosen property.

This expertise doesn’t come free, of course. An agent will typically take two per cent of the purchase price of a house. It might not sound like much, but that’s £20,000 for a £1 million house.

And for a star on the hunt for a rural retreat, this is the very bottom of the price range. Though budgets vary, few stay in six figures. Comedian Jennifer Saunders reportedly spent £1 million on her house and 45 acres in Chagford, Devon, while her comedy partner Dawn French apparently spent double that on a 40-room mansion at Fowey in Cornwall. From there, prices shoot up. In 2004, Madonna and then-husband Guy Ritchie spent about £9m on their 1,100 acre estate on the Wiltshire/Dorset border.

Notwithstanding those famous purchases, buying agents say the most favoured locations are Exmoor, spanning north Devon and Somerset; the south coast of Dorset including uber-wealthy Sandbanks; and the South Hams in Devon. This includes sailing resorts such as Dartmouth and pretty coves and rugged cliff-tops in Cornwall.

The A-list must-haves include plenty of land to indulge in anything from quad biking, like Rik Mayall in Devon, to horse riding, like Martin Clunes in Dorset. Buying agents are typically also asked to ensure the internal layout is flexible enough for intimate gatherings and lavish parties alike.

Sometimes there is a more exotic request. The agents are too discreet to name names, but say an American star is currently on the hunt for a home in Devon, but it must have a helipad and a hangar for his chopper.

Meanwhile, a British soap star refused to move into his new Somerset home until a 10m-diameter hot tub had been installed in the garden.

Agents are agreed that all celebrities want strict privacy. That rules out homes built close to a road, in any kind of modern development, anywhere with public rights of way through the land, or in a dip which can be overlooked by adoring fans or camera-wielding paparazzi. Kate Bush has recently had to beef up security at her home in Chilverstone, near Salcombe, for just this reason. Some have gone even further, says George Wade:

“When Madonna bought the Ashcombe Estate on the Dorset border, there was a footpath down the drive and past the main house. She managed to get it temporarily diverted during her ownership. Otherwise there would have been a constant stream of fans walking past and taking photographs, all within the law,” he says.

Another buying agent, Gideon Sumption, who handles celebrity queries in Devon for Stacks Property Search, says well-known buyers love their bling at first, but then give in to the laid-back West Country lifestyle. “They come for peace and the chance to get muddy without anyone staring. Their homes are often comfortable but unflashy farmhouses, well-protected by land. To start with many are kitted out in a glitzy, un-Devon way, but after the arrival of children, the sound system usually makes way for stables,” he says.

Another reason celebrities love the West Country is that the locals are unfazed by fame.

“There’s no celebrity culture. People are judged on what they do, rather than any wealth or fame they have,” says Julian Fellowes, who lives in Dorchester, Dorset.

He does his bit for his area by serving as Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Dorset, and sponsors a mobile cinema to visit rural areas of the West Country. He’s not the only one giving something back to the community.

Doc Martin star Martin Clunes – whose show is filmed in the Cornish village of Port Isaac – sells kisses at an annual charity fair held on his 20-acre farm in the Dorset village of Buckham. It’s uncertain how much money this raises, but it’s in a good cause.

Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan, who own a home on the edge of the Cornish port of Polperro, often lend their names to local fishing charity fund-raising events. And political pundit Andrew Marr is patron of Exmouth lifeboat station near his Devon holiday home.

Though they might use their profile to help local charities, celebrities choose the West Country because it allows them to lead a relatively normal life. This is according to Stacks buying agent, Amanda Ake.

“You’ll see them on the touchline at school sporting fixtures shouting loudly for their team and embarrassing their children. Just like non-celebrity parents,” she says.

With this kind of attitude, celebrities are unlikely to change the unspoilt nature of the West Country that attracted them in the first place.

No star is too big to appreciate the area’s charms. Just consider the food that Brad Pitt sent out for when he was staying in the Cornish port of Falmouth this summer. Not caviar, not foie gras, but a humble pasty.